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Staircases. Boring, everyday, utilitarian things, yes?

Not always.

Sometimes you need to look at everyday things in new ways. When you babyproof a house, they tell you that the best way to do it is to crawl around on the floor and pretend you’re 2 1/2 feet tall. Things look very different from down there! Having a toddler has really reminded me that so many of the things that we take for granted are actually pretty amazing. The leaves on the trees that have been green for…well, as long as a two-year-old can remember - suddenly “red! and yellow! and orrrrnnnggge! No green? Red! Treeees!” And it’s amazing and thrilling to her. The wind blowing the leaves off of the trees, swirling leaves on the sidewalk - amazing, and fun, and brand new. They’re not just another chore to add to the list, they’re a miraculous discover full of things to explore and discover.

Try applying it to your own everyday life. Look around at your environment and see if you can get a new perspective on things. Find an opportunity for something different in something you’ve been overlooking for too long. Find the miracle in something you’ve taken for granted.

Be careful out there.

This makes me laugh for so many reasons.

You know that phrase, “the hurrieder I go, the behinder I get”? Yeah. No matter how much you shovel, you know you’re destined to stay behind, because it’s snowing faster than you could possibly shovel?

Greg Knauss knows that feeling, too. In The Back-Logged Life, he tells us how he’s dealing with the seemingly endless to-do lists and bottomless inbox. He raises an interesting point: how important is all that stuff, really?

Is the sense of futility that we get from our crammed inboxes and lengthy email queues an inevitable byproduct of the wired world we live in? Are the two (or three or four) phone lines and multiple email addresses we all have making our lives more complicated and less effective than the old single number, no call-waiting, no voicemail lives we used to live? Used to be that I was either here or I wasn’t - now I get the same message on my home phone and my cell phone, and they’re often followed up by an email…letting me know that you left me voicemail.

...and I’m not talking about diapers!

The Wall Street Journal has issued a correction:

I like baseball. I didn’t used to, but now I do. Wanna know why? Well, these reasons aren’t far off the mark.

This has been making the rounds lately, and it makes me laugh: the Six Patron Saints of Graphic Design. Because everyone needs a patron saint (or two).